Sony Continues Its Fight Against Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard Acquisition

The UK’s Competition Markets Authority (CMA) recently published statements from Sony and Microsoft around the ongoing fight for the Activision Blizzard deal’s future. These published documents come after the UK regulator’s recent demands for the deal to go through, one of which is to sell off Call of Duty, to which Sony supported. Sony has been an avid critic of the 69.7 billion dollar deal since its announcement in January 2022 concerning its impact on the game industry and dosen’t seem to be stopping. In addition to potentially threatening competition within the gaming industry, Sony claimed that Microsoft could raise the price of Call of Duty or even sabotaging Call of Duty on PlayStation systems by purposefully releasing a bug-filled version on PlayStation systems.

“Microsoft might release a PlayStation version of Call of Duty where bugs and errors emerge only on the game’s final level or after later updates,” said Sony. “Even if such degradations could be swiftly detected, any remedy would likely come too late, by which time the gaming community would have lost confidence in PlayStation as a go-to venue to play Call of Duty. Indeed, as Modern Warfare II attests, Call of Duty is most often purchased in just the first few weeks of release. If it became known that the game’s performance on PlayStation was worse than on Xbox, Call of Duty gamers could decide to switch to Xbox, for fear of playing their favorite game at a second-class or less competitive venue.”

It is unlikely that Microsoft would go to such lengths against its industry rival, that said considering the size of the deal, Sony’s wariness wouldn’t be unfounded no matter Microsoft’s constant reassurances.

Microsoft has continued to offer Sony the same 10-year legally binding deal made with Nintendo and NVIDIA, to bring Activision Blizzard titles like Call of Duty to their systems, but unsurprisingly no progress has been made. Sony has claimed that Microsoft haven’t been forthcoming with the details of the deal.

“Microsoft has not shown any real commitment to reaching a negotiated outcome,” said Sony. “They have dragged their feet, engaged only when they sensed the regulatory outlook was darkening and favored negotiating in the media over engaging with SIE.”